Euripides, Fragmentary plays

Martin Cropp (University of Calgary)

Ed. by Vaios Liapis, Open University of Cyprus
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.1.1: Greek Writing and Culture: Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic and Imperial, -800--100.
Vol. editors: Jonathan Burgess (University of Toronto), Anca Dan (École Practique de Hautes Études PSL), Martine Diepenbroek (University of Johannesburg), Giacomo Fedeli (University of Exeter), Victoria Fendel (University of Oxford), Emily Kneebone (University of Nottingham), Vaios Liapis (Open University of Cyprus), Elodie Paillard (University of Sydney), Mali Skotheim (Ashoka University), Laura Swift (The Open University), Guendalina Daniela Maria Taietti (University of Liverpool)

Dates

First circulation or publication -455 - -405

Places

Ancient Greece (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Drama

Resources

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This is the same article as the one published in our Context section, Euripides' Fragmentary Plays.

1.The Evidence

Euripides composed around 90 plays in his fifty-year production career (455–405 bce). The corpus of texts transmitted from antiquity through the middle ages and into modern times includes seventeen tragedies, one satyr-play (Cyclops), and a further tragedy, Rhesus, which seems to have been confused with Euripides' own play of that name. Some evidence survives for another sixty plays, ranging from mere titles to quite substantial text-fragments and other information. Fifty of these are tragedies and only ten are satyr-plays, so the missing dozen may have included more satyr-plays than tragedies. The sixty plays (together with their production-dates, so far as

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4203 words

Citation: Cropp, Martin. "Fragmentary plays". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 January 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=38789, accessed 22 November 2024.]